


a dereliction

by sifr (Reishiin)



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5469593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/sifr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veils and Candles, through the Fallen Cities and before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a dereliction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serenade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenade/gifts).



 

 

 

Veils thinks that they are the ones the gods forgot.

On the Great Chain of Being, chiroptera do not hold a high position. They are only fit to be pawns in the great machinations of the stars, but precisely because they are insignificant, their trespasses can be more easily forgiven.  That, and their ability to make their way easily in the dark, is why they were chosen by the Bazaar.

“I — am,” tries the one who the Bazaar called ‘Candles’, making the strange sounds that do not hold the weight and power of the Correspondence. These humans; their shape, their language and ways. That which is called ‘love’, and that which is called ‘a name’. These things are foreign to all of them, but they will learn it all in time.

A candle, Veils learned, is something that gives off light. It is brought to life with a spark or fire, and burns away its own body until there is nothing left. In that respect, it is not very unlike a star.

In the eternal half-light of the Neath, the wavering flames of candles are far inferior to the brilliance of the Judgements amidst the Void. They are not nearly as cold, or steady, or bright. Even so, they suffice.

Here, at the very edge of the First City, at the terminus of roads where stone crumbles into sea. The future stretches out before them, uncertain and infinite.

Candles says that perhaps one day they too will forget their gods.

 

 

 

 

On the Surface, the First City had bordered a river. Here in the Neath, it borders the sea.

In the Void, there is no such thing as water. There is only the music of the stars, and the Correspondence that arcs and curls among the Judgements like ribbons of light. The First City is packed densely with buildings and streets, so that there is no room for lakes and estuaries.

On this sundered shore beneath the Bazaar where the lacre-pools are. Each time the waves break, the sand trembles, and each time they recede, it crumbles a little more. The passage of time in the Neath is linear and inexorable, like the fate the Bazaar is hurtling forever towards, or like the pull of the tide beneath the surface of the sea.

Veils has often wondered what it is like to drown.

 

 

 

Candles says that sunlight is a promise, spoken and fulfilled by the Judgements above.

But the stars did not hear when the Second City fell. They did not hear the invocation the Pharaoh spoke to the Void, or his daughters’ words of treachery, after. It is the Bazaar who is bound, but it is her servants the chiroptera who wear the weight of the horizon-chains. Because they are disposable, and can be sacrificed. The Law and the Sequence do not reach here, but even so, it prisons them all.

When a screaming darkness descended on the Second City, chained as they were they could do nothing. Years and years later they trapped the beast and split its shadow in seven; pulled apart the flesh of a chosen vessel and sealed the pieces in. There was blood spilled over the sand that night. The chiroptera were never made to withstand such things.

Since then, Veils has taken to quiet and lightless places. When the others ask, he says that nothing is wrong. He pulls the hood of his cloak over his head to hide his face so they will not notice his strength has failed. But wherever Candles moves, he brings light with him. That light breaks the shadows that fall over Veils’ face, and reveals his fear of what is to come. It reveals that the beast lives still beneath the surface of his eyes.

The humans say that there is more than one Great Game. They say that it is played above as it is played below, but what they do not know is that as it is on the Surface, so it is in the Void. Only there, the board stretches infinitely in all directions, and the players do not take turns.

Two thousand years later, amidst the ruins of the Second City, Candles will say that sunlight is a curse.

 

 

 

 

Candles does not say anything, any more. He has been silent ever since that day, when they went for him with knives, and tore out his voice.

There are two ways to forge an agreement: a promise, or a threat. That day Veils learned the capacity of even the Correspondence for omission, and by extension, lies. It was only as the transaction was completed that he realised what was really going to happen. He had reached out then in sudden and blinding terror, but the distance between their hands might as well have been infinite.

When he returned from the Third City alone, the heavy folds of his cloak had reeked strongly of old blood and well-water. “It is done,” he had said quietly and measuredly to no one at all, and then retreated to that place of total darkness he has never let anybody else see. Days later, yards and yards of irrigo-dyed Parabola-linen would wash up on the shore of the sundered sea.

Candles does not say anything any more. But if one were to listen closely to the wind as it whistles by a well, perhaps one can still hear the screaming.

 

 

 

 

The concept of a transaction is this: there are two entities, each of whom possesses something of value. They each value the other’s possession more highly than their own, so they agree to exchange.

The Bazaar’s question: at what price love.

Veils considers: If the possession is not something of value, but instead something that is owed. In such an exchange — what, then, would be the terms. When he asks the Seekers, they reply only, “Pain.”

As long as the chiroptera have lived, they have owed the gods, but the Judgements do not demand recompense aside from the eventual and inescapable cessation of existence. To repay debt through suffering is uniquely human.

Penance is an ugly concept and an ugly word.

The concept of a debt is this: there are two entities which have made an agreement, one of whom could not fulfil the terms. The original specifications of the contract can be forgotten, but the score to be settled is not so easily forgiven.

 

 

 

 

They say the Drowned Man’s remains are North under granite. They say that in the North it is always cold, too cold for ships and too cold for gods. The Fifth City is also cold, now that it is Hallowmas, and the lacre falls.

At the end of the day, on his way to an appointment in Ladybones Road. Passing by the well in Charley Square, one hand clasped around his cloak at the hollow of his throat.  A smile cracks across his face as he falls to his knees and lays a hand on the cold worn stone. Melted Neath-snow in the road. They say all water was once well-water.  In the rising wind, his cloak billows.

He lays a single black candle at the base of the well, then stands up to leave. He does not look back. Behind him, falling snow dusts away the footprints from the road.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
